CREATING / WRITING

I know, it's been a long time. There have been a lot of changes happening, so I have not had the time to work on something.

While visiting a friend up in the bay, I got introduced to Sketch. I was briefed about UI design and kind of dived into the tool to learn the basics of it. I guess this is the start of my UI design road.

The tutorial I am doing so far is with Treehouse. I have been learning from them for awhile and decided to take the Sketch course. Pretty good so far!

Hope you like my first template. It's simple. I'm still working out some of the kinks (borders and shadows), so bare with me :) However, I did create my first icon - the clock! It was pretty complicated at first and I had to replay the video about 30x, but once I get the hang of it, it should get easier!

Overall, I am enjoying this process. There's still loads to learn - super excited about it!

So the last post had all different designs I created for the new cover photo. Yes, simple design but I am still proud of it!

​In the end, we chose #3:

Before the new cover photo, PAF had an enlarged photo of their profile photo taking it's place. The bottom left was covered up by the cover photo and there was no defining difference between the two.

Either way, it's great to see your work up in real life. Thousands of FB followers now get to see the design I created! So cool :) I also created the same cover photo for the Twitter dimensions. That will be going up soon on their profile!

I'm currently doing pro-bono consulting / coordination for Project Angel Food. They are an amazing organization in Los Angeles that feed those who are not able to cook for themselves / go out to get food. Most of the clients have critical illnesses. Every day, a batch of volunteers come in to the kitchen to prep meals for the day + drive around town delivering the meals that were made in the morning. While I've only been working with the organization for a short time so far, it's been very rewarding helping them with their social media, reaching our customer acquisition goals, and volunteering in the kitchen with other volunteers.

While we don't necessarily have a "team" and our volunteers to help with social media are always changing, we somehow manage to continue putting out content and gaining followers. Our current FB profile photo and cover letter consist of the same image. I finally decided to sit and come up with some new options. Yes, this is very, very basic design, but it was great working on the cover photos!

I first started with image 1, but then decided there was too many blues happening in one photo. I cut out text and came to image 2. I realized the profile photo already had "Project Angel Food" in it, so then went to image 3. Just to keep the PAF happy, I added back in "Project Angel Food" where it shows on image 4.

So I got a bit sidetracked today with trying to figure out some basic editing skills on photoshop. I tried working on selecting certain parts of an image and just editing those spots (photo row 1). Deleting parts of an image is shown in row 2. This one was a bit challenging - even though I could delete parts of the background, it was hard to then create a more natural setting. Once again - practice makes perfect. Row 3 - I was trying to darken the skyline so it wasn't so washed out. Not sure if I like the darkness on the face as well... probably going to play around with that one some more later.

I never had a formal introduction to Photoshop. Coming into the fashion industry and in social media, I was thrown into the lion's den and had to quickly figure out how to work the tool. Luckily, there are amazing resources online and I had wonderful coworkers who were designers helping me whenever I needed it.

Today, I looked up some YouTube tutorials and came upon a great "10 Things Beginners Want To Know How To Do"video. While I am definitely still working on these basic skills, I just wanted to highlight some compilations I put together today. Another project down in the books. With this video, I really need to work on my selection skills and exposure skills with photos - doing a deep dive on that tomorrow! But hey, without practice, there will be no perfection. ✌🏾

So, I wasn't sure what I wanted to create today. I knew I wanted to create some sort of "how - to" guide - a very simplistic one. My friend is working at an amazing company - Polymail - and I thought why not create this guide for their product. Love what you read? Check them out here​ 💌

*Note: The Polymail icon and "P O L Y M A I L" text is from Polymail, not myself.

I know the fonts do not match up with their original. At this stage, I cannot justify buying fonts when I am just practicing and in the beginning stages of creating! After learning about gradient (and still working on the kinks), I am loving it. Gradients all the way! Hope you like my new design - cannot wait to start a new tutorial today 🔥

Today I received my first tablet from Amazon - the basic Intuos tablet + stylus from Wacom. While I do not have a design background, I always have images in my mind constantly coming up every day that I always want to put into something tangible. For starters, I may not have the best eye for design or the best natural ability to produce something from thin air, but I want to explore my capabilities and dive deeper into Photoshop and Adobe Illustrator.

While working at Guess for a year, I had to teach myself the basics of Photoshop and iMovie (consisting of asking the designers many questions, watching tutorials, and the lovely trial and error). In the beginning, we did not have a social media team and my manager in digital advertising was extremely busy doing her day to day tasks to teach me the basics. However, working on a brand (G by Guess) that was starting from scratch and had limited assets, I had to quickly learn. It wasn't so bad - I actually enjoyed Photoshop and the creative side quite a lot. I was always asking my designer friends questions as if I was some 5 year old kid with a plethora of the simplest questions in life.

Fast forward to today, I always want to better my own skills and general knowledge. I am currently on the path towards marketing and social media, and I think having the skills to create your own assets is invaluable. I love content creation and I think the numbers behind marketing are fascinating. However, my content creation slightly falls short (I personally think), and I want to learn how to actually design myself. So, I will be self-learning once again diving into many tutorials and giving myself projects. I decided to write about my progress here to see my progression and hopefully look back and say "wow, look where I am now".

For my own creation, I am always inspired by the outdoors. The dark skies are taken from a different photo to create the effect that rains are about to come in this dry desert. My inspiration probably stems from the fact that I am in Los Angeles in a serious drought. I just got back from the Pacific Northwest and it is so lush with lots of rain. I wanted to combine the two! The water mark is to represent the flow of water that will soon flood the desert and hopefully bring life to the land.

Enough rambling for now. Time to go on a run where I have been training for my next half marathon (in one week)!